Might we be able to cajole planners into thinking about counter-terrorism by using the legislation that already obliges them to place crime prevention on their radar? If so, what might be the impact? That’s the $64,000 question associated with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
Planners have to consider an ever-growing range of issues when determining their applications. Section 17 of the Act already requires local authorities to think about crime and disorder reduction in the exercise of all their duties, activities and decision-making. Planning is a key factor in this because how we plan and build our local environment has a direct effect on how it’s used – or misused.
The Act is routinely cited – and at turns slammed – for providing the only tangible legislative backing for designing-out crime in the UK. There is much debate over the efficacy of such legislation, though, when the terms it uses are so vague, lacking clarity as they do in relation to the extent to which the Act should be applied and to what effect.
‘Mainstreaming’ community safety
Practitioners uphold that the value of the Act is inherent in the spirit in which it was drafted. It represents an attempt to ‘mainstream’ community safety and crime reduction by embedding concepts and tools within statutory services, awarding power to local areas so local people can tackle local issues.
Having set a precedent for breaking down service silos and highlighting that the responsibility for crime reduction and community safety extends beyond formal policing roles to the whole community – and the services delivered to that community by the public sector – is it not time to revisit the concept ten years on and reflect on its impact, value and relevance?
We often hear about our society being infused by a ‘blame culture’ that seeks to establish liability for any type of risk encroaching on our daily lives. At one end of the spectrum we witness a Duty of Care placed on statutory services to protect the rights, interests and public health of us all. At the other, we see the need to recognise our own responsibility and understanding of risk and make our own judgement as to the potential safety and harm arising from our own actions.
The impact of Section 17, then, should be seen as being less about dampening the richness, drama and vivacity of our places and spaces through over-risk averse design and a patronising nod to our inability to judge for ourselves. Rather, it’s more about teaching us the value and inherent wisdom of engaging as built environment professionals, community safety specialists and crime reduction experts to work together in integrating and embedding counter-terrorism, crime reduction and community safety as an approach to delivering and designing services and environments.
Section 17: what is its value?
Before we suggest that Section 17 should be strengthened to address a perceived vagueness, it’s important to ask what its existing value is to us all. Can its vagueness be used to our advantage – to actually develop a case for implementing it where traditionally it’s not seen as being relevant?
Security minister Lord West recently called for planners to play a vital role in the fight against terrorism, with potential targets of terrorist activity (such as shopping centres, restaurants and stadiums) being identified up and down the country on the basis that they could be attractive to those factions seeking to wreak havoc and maximise loss of life.
An augmented Section 17 could provide a vital vehicle for assisting Lord West’s argument. First, it confers a duty on the local authority in its entirety (in other words not just the Planning Department) to prevent crime and disorder. It should not simply be the preserve of planners to reduce crime or terrorism. It’s the duty of anyone engaged in the built environment, community safety or crime reduction fields.
By addressing the need to tackle terrorism through Section 17, this will engage all relevant parties from a statutory point of view.
Second, we should consider a spectrum of social malaise from neighbourly disputes through to anti-social behaviour, burglary and violence up to car bombings and suicide attacks. Designing-out crime is shorthand for a system of ideas and tools developed to use the environment and its specific attributes for overcoming social malaise. Therefore, we should actually be designing-out social problems, with Section 17 extended to cover counter-terrorism (this could be attained through the Counter Terrorism Bill).
Security equals prosperity
In terms of the private sector, much work needs to be done to sell the message that securing people and assets makes good business as well as social sense. Again, this work must be conducted on a variety of levels (whether the private sector is commissioning developments, selling them or occupying them).
The benefits of a secure environment to businesses are that:
- For a building to be successful it must always be perceived as safe (low levels of crime and fear of crime) and attractive (well-maintained and designed) to its users;
- If a building is successful it will always attract users;
- If a building is always attracting users it will always yield returns on investment;
- The global economy demands a safe and attractive environment in which to conduct business (image is everything!);
- A safe and attractive building will always be a profitable one.
Therefore, the whole designing-out crime idea is a strategic investment consideration as well as a socially beneficial one.
Recent calls from Lord West for businesses and planners to play their part in the protection of people and assets in the fight against terror are a welcome recognition of the vital role they have in the counter-terrorist ‘movement’. That said, should the focus be shifted from planning against terror to planning for cohesion?
Social cohesion and community safety require an understanding of how people interact with their surrounding social, environmental and economic context, be that in a positive or negative way. It’s a powerful perspective in which to view the development and design process because once a building or development is in place, its success or failure will be the result of how well it interacts with its surroundings and whether or not it generates positive or negative use.
We need an approach to the delivery of places, facilities and their environments that can tackle all forms of social malaise, with terrorism being the most extreme and devastating. As security professionals, we need to be engaging with planners, architects and developers to design-out crime at the earliest possible stages of the construction process.
Implementation of effective security should not be restricted to large and prestigious assets – everyone deserves good security. However, different places and developments will yield a different set of risks, threats and level of attractiveness to would-be criminals and terrorists.
Development does not take place in a vacuum. There’s a surrounding social, environmental and economic context in which it happens. Therefore, balancing these dynamics and understanding the risks and vulnerabilities they may pose can help us to incorporate security and safety solutions in the design borne of specific local conditions rather than remote universal ones.
Who pays the piper?
When considering the development of a given site, a number of different parties – among them the client, developer, local authority, local community and service providers – will be seeking a particular outcome. It’s important to manage expectations for the development. Key means for doing so are through the apportionment of different uses and an evaluation of the development’s relationship with existing uses and neighbourhoods.
It’s essential that, from the outset, a framework is devised to guide the design and development and achieve optimal conditions for a safe, sustainable and successful outcome. It’s likely that local authorities will have detailed policies on what’s required.
Architects will strive to provide interesting and aesthetically pleasing designs but they’re not always security friendly. The police will want areas easy to control, while building operators crave facilities that are easy to manage. For their part, insurers will insist on minimal risk. Finally, the end users will want an accessible and welcoming environment within which they feel both inherently safe and secure.
Security: when and by whom?
At what point should security, community safety and counter-terrorism be considered in the design and development process, and by whom? The basic tenets of security, risk management and community safety must be built into the overall process from the start. If this is successful then crime reduction, safer communities and social cohesion will be a natural by-product. Once new places are established, it’s rather difficult to rectify problems and attempt to address community and design issues at a later juncture.
It’s also crucial that everyone involved in the design and development process appreciates the importance of considering security and risk. Given the diverse viewpoints of Stakeholders in a project, it’s inevitable there’ll be a variety of potential ways forward. This means the final approach has to be a compromise of those requirements – but without compromising the overall aim of achieving a robust, unobtrusive and cost-effective security regime.
In terms of planning for cohesion, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ ‘Design Stages’ is a useful mechanism for identifying the various junctures at which security could – and should – be addressed.
As for training and skills, planners shouldn’t be expected to provide security advice or solutions, but must be able to understand their contribution to a scheme and whether or not that input will lead to the development emerging as safe, sustainable and successful.
To this end, the security profession needs a clear role in advising where and how security should be considered in planning, designing and delivering a development, and what resources the built environment needs to have in order to provide an effective response.